This Artist Finds Pantone Colors in the Wild

Andrea Antoni uses the iconic color-matching system to enhance gorgeous photos of Italy.

Pantone swatches become more than (arguably) the world's best color-matching system in the surreal photos of Italian artist and graphic designer Andrea Antoni. On his Instagram, Antoni shares images of breathtaking Italian vistas, serendipitously matched to a curated selection of Pantone swatches inserted into the frame

Beyond the digital insertion of his hand and an accompany swatch, Antoni frequently manipulates his original images, in one instance transforming a daytime shot of a barren tree into a fisheye collision of celestial bodies, anchored by a blue toned Pantone swatch.

Antoni began posting his Pantone manipulations to Instagram roughly a year ago, but the artist explains that these works have been part of his practice for far longer. "Although there is a first published image on Instagram, the idea itself came much earlier," Antoni tells Creators. "Many years ago, I would regularly publish the Pantone color of the day that matched the sky above my house."

"As a graphic designer, I've always loved the Pantone fan decks, although more for their joyfulness and color than for their intended purpose. So it happened one day that I took a particularly colorful picture and tried to combine it with the related Pantone color. Initially, I would publish the occasional picture once in a while, but now about one third of my published photos are produced this way."

Antoni's ever-increasing infatuation with these images is partially the result of a desire for nostalgic preservation. "The images reflect the way I see the world, or the memory I have of some places. Some show the sensations that these places evoke in me," he reveals. "When I heavily modify the composition, it reflects my memory and the evocations of that particular place to me. "

"While it is definitely these same places in the pictures, it is also not them; colors have changed, buildings are cut out and presented in different ways. The result is a world that is unreal from one point of view, but extremely true from another. That's the place of memory; real and recreated at the same time," Antoni says.

Andrea Antoni's Instagram feed can be viewed here. The graphic designer's official website is also worth a click.